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English Language Learners (ELL’s) need support adjusting to an English classroom. As teachers, it’s our responsibility (and passion) to differentiate instruction and provide appropriate accommodations so these ESL students can experience success and feel good about themselves and their learning.

Your first priority is to make sure the student feels a sense of belonging to the classroom community you’ve created, and is not afraid. Learning will happen if the student feels welcomed, and then if lessons are differentiated to allow them to participate according to their abilities.

Here is a quick checklist of ways to accommodate an ELL in the classroom:

Represent their culture in the classroom

Give them time just to get familiar and comfortable with the class, school, and new peers.

Print clearly and simply – avoid cursive writing and small text.

Support words and instructions – use images and visuals such as graphic organizers, pictures, and flow charts.

There are many strategies to consider when wanting to teach or learn vocabulary.

Hands-on vocabulary learning seems to be the most effective that I’ve found, as having students use multiple senses when learning a new word seems to increase retention. Although, with this method the word gain is slow and it’s not always practical in the common classroom setting. Instead, I often try teaching vocabulary that is related to eachother, together – clusters!

Clustering, or using semantic clusters, basically means learning words around one theme or idea. These themes or ideas can be quite large such as “the world” (learn: countries, ocean, continent, to discover …) or can be more focused such as “coffee” (steam, espresso, to roast …).

A few ideas on how to teach using clusters:

use theme-based ESL lessons instead of grammar-based. Grammar can be “snuck” into the lessons along with vocabulary that is related on a particular theme.

use brainstorming charts where one word branches to another with visible cluster-like appearance.

challenge students to find appropriate synonyms (words that have the same meaning).

If teaching reading, try to use a variety of resources – news articles, journals, dialogues, stories, podcasts – but with the same theme. This will increase the kinds of vocabulary that students are exposed to (expressive vs. written, for example).